


Lingering Dream

by BlueNightmare



Category: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Bondage, F/F, Humiliation, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 16:43:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18370010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNightmare/pseuds/BlueNightmare
Summary: Claire Farron's fight is over, but not all of her issues have yet been solved, and some have minds of their own.





	Lingering Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Another updated version of an old story, this one from 2015.

The hands of the town’s many clocks had wandered past midnight, and the warm lights in the windows of the neighboring houses had long since been switched off, but inside one unassuming little home at the edge of a quiet street, the lamp in Claire Farron’s bedroom still blazed bright.

Her seemingly endless struggle against fate was finally over, and the power to manipulate time itself had been lost to her along with the old world, but as the seconds dragged onward into eternity, she wondered whether her power of chronostasis was somehow still in full effect after all.

Filing taxes always left her with that impression.

The whole situation was ridiculous, in a way that only she and a handful of friends and family would ever know. Claire Farron - _Lightning_ \- fought monsters, slew gods, defied fate. She was a force of nature that nobody could stand against, the savior who had allowed this new world to be born the way it was meant to be, and now here she was, locked in combat with a stack of paperwork as frustratingly stubborn as any opponent she had ever faced. Whatever she had imagined the new world to hold, taxation forms had not been high on the list.

Unfortunately, these irritating pieces of paper were one enemy she couldn't skewer with a sword. The battle had already lasted almost an hour, and she was on the verge of giving in, letting the countless numbers blurring together in her head have their victory for tonight. She was too tired for this crap.

_Give me another fal'Cie to fight any day._

She pressed a hand against her face, her fingers splaying around her nose and passing over her weary eyes, breathing a frustrated sigh into her open palm. This was her new reality. Lightning fought monsters. Claire Farron filled out forms. Such irritants had been a part of her life even as a soldier in the old world, before the events that had changed all she had ever known, but somehow, after everything she had been through, they were even more tiresome now.

Something buzzed against the table at which she sat, interrupting her resentful thoughts, drumming a tune into the polished wood as it demanded her attention. Her phone, Claire realized through the cloud of tiredness filling her head. The screen displayed Fang’s name.

She let it ring out, waiting until the phone fell silent and still. Whenever Fang called at this time of night, it was an invitation to a bar and an already-in-progress drinking session. Tonight, Claire lacked the patience to even consider it.

It had been weeks since she had even seen her dark-haired friend, she belatedly remembered as she stared blankly at the phone, dreading that it might begin to vibrate again. Vanille, too, although Fang’s girlfriend was rarely far from her side, anyway. Hell, it had been over a week since she had last made time for her own sister, Serah, and the girl’s new husband, Snow. As for the others... it disturbed her to discover that she’d lost track.

Damn it. She was far too tired to dwell on this now. Maybe sometime next week she could make time for the friends and family she had been neglecting, but right now, she needed to get some sleep. Pushing the tax papers to the far side of the table, she stood and made her way across her room to her waiting bed, dropping onto it without even bothering to shed her clothing.

_I can worry about that tomorrow, too._

Barely a minute passed before Claire fell into a deep sleep, letting her worries slide away into the dark.

~ ~ ~

“It’s been a while, Lightning.”

The girlish voice coaxed Claire out of her slumber, chasing away the blur of images and feelings that had passed for dreams. It was familiar, a voice she had heard many times before, yet even before she realized whom it belonged to, she found herself plagued with unease, as if her brain had instantly recognised it as a threat.

Her eyes cracked open, slowly adjusting to the light, bringing a pretty young visage into focus.

The girl’s face hovered barely two feet above her own, a pair of vivid blue eyes staring back down into hers, twinkling with mischief. Soft pink lips curled into a wicked smile, hair of a slightly darker shade trailing loose from the sides of her face and dangling over Claire’s head. At the left side of the girl’s head, a ponytail, tied back with a black band reminiscent of the frilly, lacy, ruffled mess of clothing she wore. A small black dress with a tall collar and a short skirt, leaving her arms bare but for the single long glove she wore on her left arm, patterns woven into the lace. Tight-fitting stockings that covered her legs from foot to mid-thigh. Elegant, eclectic and as unpredictable as the girl who wore it.

“Serah,” Claire murmured, realizing her mistake the moment the words left her lips. The disappointed look on the girl’s face hurt more than it should have. “No... Lumina.”

It was easy to make the mistake, at first. She resembled Claire's sister even more now, taller and older in appearance, though for her such things had meant little to begin with. Had she not known better, had it not been for the cunning gleam in her wide blue eyes and instincts honed by a seeming eternity of dealing with magical trickery, she might have fallen for the deception entirely.

“Oh, so you haven’t forgotten me after all.” Lumina gave a gentle shake of her head as she stared down at Claire, refusing to budge as the older woman attempted to rise. “I’m sure you can see how I might get the wrong idea. You did forget our agreement, after all.”

“What agreement?” Claire snapped, planting her hands against the bedcovers and attempting to force her way out from under Lumina. Damn her, she was right on top of her! “I know you’re a part of me. I accepted you. You disappeared. That’s it. What are you even doing back here, anyway? You shouldn’t be able to-”

“No, no, that’s not it!” Lumina interrupted, planting a small hand upon Claire’s breastbone and pushing her back down onto the bed. “You’re not thinking, Lightning.”

Claire scowled, bristling at the physical familiarity. That Lumina was merely a manifestation of her own suppressed emotions didn’t make it any less uncomfortable, and she seized the girl’s wrist, pulling it aside. “It’s Claire.”

“No, you’re not. That’s just it.” Lumina gave a heavy sigh of dismay, the same one she always gave when her older self failed to grasp what seemed obvious to her. “You’re still Lightning. The soldier. The fugitive. The savior. Whatever. Claire hasn’t been out to play in years. Not since she locked a part of herself away and made herself grow up so she could look after Serah.”

She raised her index finger in front of Claire’s nose, blue eyes filled with accusations fixing on her older self’s. “Well, Serah doesn’t need looking after anymore. You saved her. She’s married. She’s _happy_. Why are you still hiding your feelings away from people? Why are you so... so boring?!”

Claire bared her teeth, letting anger sweep away the nagging knowledge that Lumina was right. “This is my life. I don’t have to justify myself to anyone, least of all you. You don’t have the faintest idea about responsibility, or-”

“You can’t just shut me away anymore, Lightning.” The mischief and disapproval in Lumina’s bright eyes gave way to genuine anger. Her hand thrust back against Claire’s collarbone, pinning her down against the bed, the girl’s pretty face swooping alarmingly close to hers. ”You _made_ me into something more than a few emotions you can ignore. How many epiphanies do you need, Claire? You’re not happy like this. _I’m_ not happy like this.”

“Enough!” Claire’s temper flared in response to Lumina’s, her hands rising to force the spiteful little thing away from her. Before the girl had a chance to recover, Claire swung herself upright, then climbed from her bed, staring her antagonist down. “Everyone has to grow up sometime, Lumina. You’re a part of me - I accept that - but you’re a childish part.”

“Still a part.” Lumina sprang upright and thrust her index finger at Claire, unfazed by the significant difference in their height. Now that both were standing, it was much harder to ignore physical realities, reinforcing Lumina’s immaturity to Claire as much as it did Claire’s seniority and control to Lumina. “Growing up doesn’t mean throwing parts of yourself away, Lightning. You need to accept me. Do I have to force you?”

Claire snorted. Now she was just being ridiculous. “Force me? You’ve seen what I’m capable of. What I’ve done to get here. In what world do you think you can force me to do anything?”

“In which world? This world.”

Lumina’s angry pout dissolved into a cheshire-cat grin, as if she had been waiting for this moment all along. She turned around, her arms extending to sweep around her as she came full circle, indicating the entirety of their surroundings. “Where do you think we are right now? I know this looks like your boring old bedroom, but it’s not. Can’t you tell?”

Claire folded her arms across her chest, readying a disbelieving retort, but despite her extreme skepticism of Lumina’s claim, she could not keep her eyes from wandering over the familiar surroundings, scanning for some telltale sign that the manipulative girl was telling the truth. Everything in the room looked just as it should from the barely-disturbed bed she had slept on to the collection of half-finished forms on the table against the far wall. Even the lamp was still switched on, just as she had left it in her sleepy daze, providing the bright light that filled the room...

Wait. Wasn’t it morning yet?

Claire blinked, casting her gaze towards the window in confusion. She felt well-rested, and had assumed in the back of her mind that morning had come, but until now her full attention had been occupied by Lumina. The curtains were drawn over the window, but in the daytime, the sunlight was bright enough to pierce them. Was it still the same night?

Lumina stepped back into Claire’s field of view, a coy smile on her lips. “Why don’t you go and take a look out there?”

The unease that Claire had felt when she had first awoken returned, stronger than ever. Brisk steps carried her over to the wall, and a swift sweep of her arm brushed the thin curtains aside, revealing the world beyond her bedroom window.

Or rather, the lack of it.

Blackness. Utter, all-consuming blackness.

Ignoring the cold sensation creeping its way through her gut, Claire spun around to confront the little trickster, her hand automatically reaching to her shoulder for a weapon that wasn’t there. “What the hell did you do?!”

“A better question would be ‘where are we, Lumina’, don’t you think?” Her hands clasped in front of her in a mockery of a heartfelt plea, Lumina gave her a knowing smirk as she skipped back to Claire’s side. Her every little movement was as carefree as the child she resembled, despite the older and crueler heart that beat within her chest. “Well, if I need to spell it out for you, you haven’t really woken up yet. We’re inside your head, Lightning... or, our head, that is. My part, to be specific. The part of your brain where you tried to lock me away while you were busy being little miss serious. We’ll be staying here a while.”

“Like hell we will.” No weapon was available and her magical abilities had deserted her when she had arrived in the new world, but Claire was in no mood to put up with Lumina’s trickery. Even knowing what the girl was, a truth that had been kept from her during her time as the savior, she was still as irritating as ever. She reached forward to snare Lumina by her ridiculous collar, snarling as the younger girl twirled out of reach. “How do I get out of this?”

The little vixen wagged a lecturing finger. “You get out of this when you wake up. You wake up when I say you can. I say you can when I feel like we’ve made some genuine progress here, and- ah ah ah!” Ducking another failed attempt at seizing her, Lumina dispersed her form into radiant motes of light, only to reconstitute herself across the room by the door, smirking at Claire. “You’re really not going to co-operate, huh? That’s unfortunate, Lightning. It really is.”

Startled by the girl’s unexpected use of magic, Claire instinctively retaliated, thrusting a hand towards Lumina as if expecting that a spell of her own would result. Unfortunately, no such thing happened.

“No, no, you still can’t do that.” Lumina shook her head in pretend dismay. “Like I said, we’re in my part of our brain right now. That means what I say goes. For example, right now, I wanna do _this_.”

A flick of her wrist, and suddenly Claire felt a little colder.

Ice magic? She braced for the pain that inevitably followed the initial chill, but no such sensation eventuated. Perplexed, she cast a glance down at her body, checking for signs of gathering frost... only to lay eyes on her completely naked body.

_What the hell?!_

Clapping her hands in gleeful amusement, Lumina giggled as Claire instinctively moved to cover her breasts, pointedly sliding her gaze down to her other self’s crotch as if to remind her that there was more she could be hiding. “Don’t take it so seriously, Lightning! It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. I’m you, remember? Although... you are a little bigger than I remember...”

“ _Lumina_.” Trying to pretend to herself that she wasn’t blushing like a schoolgirl, Claire took a threatening step towards her tormentor, letting her hands fall from her breasts and clench into white-knuckled fists. “This. Stops. Now. End this. I’m waking up.”

“No you’re not.”

Something _snapped_ tight around Claire’s wrists.

She stopped short. Raised her hands in front of her. Took in the sight of two thick leather bands, black with large silver buckles, one circling each of her wrists. Little padlocks swayed tauntingly from the sudden movement, obnoxiously shaped like tiny silver hearts, a sight that set Claire’s blood to burning. “What do you think you’re-”

Lumina clicked her fingers, and the cuffs jerked upwards, flying above Claire’s head and carrying her arms with them.

Claire’s gaze traveled upward, following her suddenly straining arms as they stretched taut above her. Dark, wispy trails, resembling the soft black lace of Lumina’s single glove, hung from the ceiling to the leather cuffs around her wrists. If its sudden appearance didn’t make its supernatural qualities obvious, its resilience did - no matter how hard she struggled against it, she couldn’t bring her arms back down even an inch. It didn’t even stretch. She was stuck.

That was not enough to cow Claire Farron. Grinding her teeth, she lunged at the little bitch with all of her strength, growling in frustration as the cuffs pulled her back into place before she could close even a quarter of the distance between them. “Lumina. Let me go.”

“We’re surprisingly kinky, don’t you think?” Completely ignoring her prisoner’s demands, Lumina lifted a finger to her chin, as if deep in thought. “Well, I am, anyway... but I guess that means we both are. Another one of those feelings you just had to bury? Your naughty side?”

_She’s just trying to make me angry._ Fixing her mind on that assurance gave Claire an excuse to brush away the nagging feeling that there was something to Lumina’s words, and she renewed her struggles against the leather cuffs, attempting to tug herself out of their grip.

It was no use. The leather was simply too tight to pull free from, denying her hand the space to slip through. The lace, or whatever it was, proved as strong as a metal chain might have been, if silent and much lighter. She would not be breaking free.

“I don’t hear you denying it.” Gracefully gliding steps carried Lumina back to Claire, that impish smile on her lips. “That’s almost as good as admitting it. Are you going to confess? We’ve got a lot of confessions to go through. A lot of things about yourself that you’re gonna have to accept if you want to get out of here. Might as well start now, huh?”

Claire’s leg shot out, aiming a vicious kick at the girl’s stomach. “Accept this.”

Of course, her foot passed through twinkling glimmers of light.

“Oh, come on. You can do better than that. The kick, and the line.” Lumina once again shook her head as she reappeared just out of reach, sending her all-too-Serah-like hairstyle swaying like a puppy’s tail. “Not that I’m going to give you another chance on either. If we have to do this the hard way...”

Two more cuffs manifested around Claire’s ankles, seizing tight against her flesh, then jerked her legs wide apart. Twin hooks of familiar black lace poked up from the carpet beneath her feet, drawing back like snakes preparing to strike, then burying themselves inside the leather restraints, keeping Claire’s ankles locked to the floor and spread wide apart.

“Then we will.” Lumina held out her hand to her other self, watching darkness coalesce into a ball in her palm. The sphere grew steadily before their eyes, its black surface smooth and shiny, swelling from the size of a marble to that of a tennis ball before it stopped. As Claire looked on with morbid interest, twin tendrils spawned from its poles, long and flat, taking on a leathery cast...

With her stomach sinking like a stone, she realized what she was looking at even before the buckle began to take form. “Don’t you dare.”

Lumina only giggled in response as the ball gag completed itself, dangling it by the straps and smiling wickedly at her fully restrained alter ego. Stripped naked, legs spread, powerless to cover herself or to fight back... seeing her that way brought a wave of tingly feelings to the younger girl, a warmth between her thighs that was becoming harder to ignore. If she felt this way, then surely Claire should at least be feeling the beginnings of desire herself...

Resolving to investigate the situation herself in a few moments, Lumina lifted the ball gag to Claire’s mouth, delighting in the cold fury in her older self’s icy eyes glare as she locked her jaw shut in refusal. She had expected this stubbornness, as anyone who knew Claire even half as well would have, but even her steadfast will would not be enough to defy her fate this time. One small hand pressed the smooth rubber ball against Claire’s tightly sealed lips, while the other swooped upon her left breast, capturing her nipple between her mean little fingers.

The intimate contact made Claire draw in a sharp breath, but even the sudden stab of lust that flashed through her wide-stretched body failed to make her drop her guard enough to open her mouth. Gritting her teeth, she turned her head away from the ball, knowing that she was just delaying the inevitable but too proud to give in so easily.

The ball gag followed her movements, Lumina’s hand keeping the black sphere firmly lodged against Claire’s lips no matter which was she tried to turn. Her refusal to look in Lumina’s direction prevented her from seeing the cruel delight on the younger girl’s face as she rolled Claire’s nipple between finger and thumb, teasing it with the soft warmth of her fingertips, enjoying her control over “Lightning” as much as the act itself.

Claire braced herself, expecting a brutal pinch to follow. She would not cry out. She was stronger than that. Soldier, savior, goddess. Bhunivelze himself couldn’t break her will. What chance did Lumina have?

Lumina giggled, stroked the rosy bud with her thumb, breathed a hot little gust of air onto the sensitive tip... and delivered a brutal twist.

The pain that gouged through Claire’s breast was sharper and harder to ignore than she had expected, but she could have endured had it dulled as quickly as she had hoped. To the contrary, Lumina only twisted harder as the painful seconds crept by, pulling outward on Claire’s suffering nipple, bringing tears to the corners of her shuttered eyes. She had taken more physical blows and magical assaults in battle than she could count, but this was different, a kind of pain that she was unaccustomed to, not least because of the thread of pleasure that accompanied it.

At last, she cried out, and the ball gag popped home behind her teeth.

“Not so tough now, huh?” A musical, taunting little laugh accompanied the movements of the gag’s leather straps as they spread themselves around Claire’s head, buckling together in the back without any visible command from Lumina. “Getting the message yet? You can’t do anything about this, so you might as well give in and enjoy it. I’m not going to tell.”

The glare she received in response could have struck a behemoth dead.

“Oh, come now, we both know you’re into this. You can’t hide your feelings from me, because I’m the place where you lock away those feelings in the first place.” Lumina on the other hand was still very much alive, wagging a chiding finger at Claire and bringing the dainty digit to rest on the already saliva-slick surface of the ball gag between her lips. “You like the loss of power. The absence of responsibility. You even kind of like the feel of it, although this part here, not so much.”

Her vivid blue eyes watched the first trail of drool slip from the gag’s round surface, sliding down Claire’s chin and dripping down to the soft valley between her breasts. The elder woman’s humiliated blush and the growl that surged from the back of her throat to crash against her gag only served to renew the lustful tingle between Lumina’s thighs.

“Or maybe you’d rather be on the dominant side of things?” Tilting her head as if in thought, Lumina let her eyes follow the trail of drool as it trickled down Claire’s body, thickening and lengthening by the moment. “I guess I’m living proof that you’re into that too. If you want, I’ll let you tie me up and spank me later. I have been a bad girl, after all.”

Claire averted her gaze, but shutting Lumina out of her sight did not diminish the truth of what she had said. She had closed certain desires away with countless other things when she had chosen to become Lightning for her sister’s sake, but now that Lumina had dragged them back out into the light of day, they hadn’t been eroded in the least.

“Want to know a secret?” Her voice theatrically dropping to a whisper, Lumina cupped a hand beside her mouth, leaning in close to the helpless Claire. “Time flows a lot slower here in our head than it does out in the real world. You’ve got a lot of thinking time ahead of you before morning comes. It’d really be best if you could admit the truth quickly, because I could leave you here for what’ll seem like days. You won’t get hungry or thirsty or tired... just really, _really_ frustrated.”

Ignoring Claire’s slurring groans, she dropped into a squat in front of her, peering curiously between her older self’s legs. “Hmm... nothing going on down here yet, huh? Maybe you’re more repressed than I thought. Tell you what...”

She sprang back up to a standing position, smiling sweetly. “I’ll give you a little alone time. I know I’m just a part of you, so you’re technically alone right now, but maybe you need even more privacy to... work things out. I’m gonna go for a bit.”

With that, Lumina faded away, her playful voice echoing throughout the facsimile of Claire’s bedroom as her body dispersed into light.

“But if you’re not at least a little wet by the time I come back, I’m gonna have to get involved.”


End file.
